Of course, it will only be a matter of time before some pundit blames this storm on “global warming”. Readers feel free to post links to such stories in the comments.
click images to enlarge. Loop the radar image here
The record nature of this storm is the low barometric pressure (< 960 mb), on par with a major hurricane (if this storm were centered in the tropics and not in Minnesota). However, this system is not typical Arctic blizzard, but a more subtropical/tropically oriented monster. Nevertheless, Southern Canada will be covered in snow.
RUC Analyzed Sea-Level Pressure and WRF Simulated Radar Reflectivity Forecast
AccuWeather News Forecast FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Violent Storms Spawning Tornadoes Across Midwest
State College, PA — October 26, 2010 — AccuWeather.com reports a rip-roaring squall line (or line of severe thunderstorms) got under way in the heart of the Midwest Monday night and has already spawned tornadoes and caused widespread damage from Missouri and Kentucky to Illinois and Wisconsin.
Indianapolis is getting hit by these thunderstorms right now.
This dangerous line of thunderstorms will continue racing eastward across the Midwest today, expanding the damage swath all the way through Ohio. Destructive winds and tornadoes will remain the primary threats.
Several tornadoes have already been sighted in northeastern Illinois, southeastern Wisconsin and southwestern Kentucky. Damage to homes has been reported with one of the twisters near Peotone, Ill. Another reportedly uprooted and downed trees onto homes near Racine, Wis.
Before sunrise Tuesday, the thunderstorms were lined up from Paducah, Ky., to just west of Chicago, Ill. The main line blasted through Chicago between 7 and 8 a.m. CDT.
The line will continue roaring eastward at about 60 mph throughout the day. If you are able to safely take photos or video of the damage from these thunderstorms, be sure to post them on our AccuWeather.com Facebook page.
Other cities in the path of these vicious thunderstorms include Louisville, Ky., Toledo, Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati, Ohio as well as Detroit. It’s in this general area where the worst of the severe weather can be expected.
Severe thunderstorms will also affect areas farther south through Tennessee and northern parts of Mississippi and Alabama, including Nashville. However, damage is not expected to be quite as widespread as in areas farther north across the Lower Midwest.
People in the path of these thunderstorms need to stay alert to their local weather conditions and head to the lowest level of a sturdy building immediately if a severe thunderstorm or tornado warning is issued.
These thunderstorms will be knocking trees and power lines down, potentially onto roadways, buildings and vehicles. Often times when this happens, lives are tragically lost.
Again, some of the thunderstorms could also spawn more tornadoes. Any tornado that touches down in a populated area today could be devastating.
Even though the nasty thunderstorms will exit the Midwest tonight, howling winds will pick up behind them through Wednesday with gusts up to 70 mph threatening to cause more wind damage.
Story by Heather Buchman, Meteorologist for AccuWeather.com
The local climate is being disrupted!
I’m in Loudonville, Ohio. It’s going to be on me in 20 minutes or so. It’s really blowing up on this hill.
it’s fascinating to look at on the map. Down here in East Texas we were right on the bottom of that line slashing across the country, and yet still the wind blew quite powerfully all night, even without storms. I’ve always been in love with the feeling you get when you go outside and you can feel these huge masses of air on the move. I know that sounds odd to say, and I’m not in love with storms themselves or the damage they cause. But there’s so much energy in the air when these kinds of things go through that it can make my skin tingle!
Here in Minnesota it was windy and almost huricane force, but nothing that unusual. For “wimps” in Florida have no idea what Minnesota weather is like.
Tornado sirens going off N.E. of Columbus, OH. Starting to hear the boomers in the near distance! Whoo hoo! Our climate here is hacked off! 🙂
News radio mentioned that it was a storm the likes of which as not been seen in 70 years. If anyone suggests it was caused by global warming, climate disruption, or CO2 will need to resolve the conditions 70 years ago. Meanwhile, the vineyards around here have been rushing to get the grapes harvested following a disappointingly cool summer (lower sugar content) and the onset of early wet storms. A ski resort near Tahoe opens this weekend. Others may open for Thanksgiving. Seems to me we are well into a cooling trend and a ‘reversion to the mean.’
In Minnesota, they have broken the all time record for lowest pressure.
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/images/dlh/StormSummaries/2010/october26/pressurerecord.pdf
“PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DULUTH MN
1055 AM CDT TUE OCT 26 2010
…MINNESOTA ALL TIME LOWEST PRESSURE RECORD BROKEN THIS MORNING…
…PRESSURE IS STILL FALLING AND WILL CONTINUE INTO THE AFTERNOON…
REMEMBER THAT THIS INFORMATION IS PRELIMINARY. THE LOW IS STILL
STRENGTHENING SO THE VALUES LISTED BELOW ARE LIKELY TO CHANGE.
AN UNUSUALLY INTENSE LOW WAS AFFECTING THE STATE OF MINNESOTA THIS
MORNING. AT 1013 AM CDT…THE AUTOMATED WEATHER OBSERVING SYSTEM AT
AITKIN MINNESOTA RECORDED A 962.3 MILLIBAR /28.42 INCHES/ PRESSURE.
THIS BREAKS THE ALL TIME MINNESOTA STATE RECORD FOR THE LOWEST
OBSERVED PRESSURE.
THE PREVIOUS RECORD WAS 962.6 MB SET ON NOVEMBER 10 1998 AT ALBERT
LEA AND AUSTIN IN SOUTHERN MINNESOTA.
IT SHOULD ALSO BE NOTED THAT DULUTH BROKE THEIR PRESSURE RECORD. AS
OF 1028 AM…THE PRESSURE AT DULUTH WAS 962.9 MILLIBARS /28.44
INCHES/. THIS BREAKS THE PREVIOUS RECORD OF 964.3 MILLIBARS WHICH
OCCURRED ON NOVEMBER 10 1998.
PRESSURE RECORDS AT INTERNATIONAL FALLS WERE ONLY AVAILABLE BACK TO
1948. THE LOWEST PRESSURE PREVIOUSLY AT THAT LOCATION WAS 971.9
MILLIBARS ON OCTOBER 10 1949. THE PRESSURE AS OF 1024 AM WAS 967.4
MILLIBARS /28.57 INCHES/. THEREFORE…INTERNATIONAL FALLS ALSO BROKE
THEIR PRESSURE RECORD.
THE LOW CONTINUES TO DEEPEN AND THE PRESSURE WILL LIKELY CONTINUE TO
FALL. THEREFORE…THIS STATEMENT IS PRELIMINARY AND WILL BE UPDATED
ONCE THE LOWEST PRESSURE IS FINALLY OBSERVED.
THE LOW WAS AT ABOUT 983 MB ONLY 24 HOURS AGO OVER CENTRAL SOUTH
DAKOTA. THAT IS A PRESSURE DROP OF ABOUT 21 MILLIBARS IN 24 HOURS
So far (knocking on wood here) this storm is not as bad in the Cincinnati area as the windstorm Ike brought up here in 2008. That storm was something else. I was almost crushed to death helping a neighbor pull a tree down to keep it from falling on his house. I’ll hope for a little less excitement. 🙂
In 10 days or so, “models” indicate that a large system will come out of the Windwards and will end up as a big Nor-easter, much like last year with TS Ida when it came back to life to lash the east coast with stormy winds. More of the same….
You can really see it intensify in the twelve hours here.
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sfc_con_pres.html
Pretty gnarly when you consider the pressures involved. Low sunspots are linked to hurricanes, do sunspots have an effect on atmosphere pressure? Maybe the activity of the sun stabilizes the atmosphere to prevent pressure fluctuations?
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/hurricanes/2010-06-01-hurricanes-sun_N.htm
It is from such storms that the “gales of November” of Edmund Fitzgerald fame are spawned. This one is a week early for November, so it’s worse than we thought.
I’ve just had this picture shared with me:
http://my.whiotv.com/_Tramp-on-van/PHOTO/11469982/6688.html?widgetId=239134
OT but reckon Sir Muir Russell will hit big time today re inquiry
see CA
Enjoy it buddies!….This issue of a new Maunder like minimum it is a serious matter, no jokes…. anyway our scientific curiosity will be rewarded to the top. Buy more popcorn!
Mr. Watts:
While no single storm can be traced to global warming, what is the energy source that drives the extreme low pressure of this particular storm?
Is it due to higher air temperatures or did the storm initially get its strength over water?
How can be global warming blamed, when it occurs in October, much colder than summer? Atmosphere does not care about datum in calendar, but about its physical properties. If there is direct relation between absolute temperature and extreme events, as it is claimed, there should be no extreme events during the winter and all during the summer. Increase of extreme events should be then observed only during those few summer weeks, when temperature goes few tenths of degree above some 1960-90 standard. Nonsense all that.
RyanMaue: The idea is that the “mean” global temperature is increasing. Thus, assuming the distribution of temperatures stays the same, the whole thing shifts to the right, meaning a longer tale towards more extreme warmth. However, there is no reason to believe that the temperature distribution globally or locally is constant or will change uniformly. Thus, when climate scientists say that record highs are increasing, they are only giving you half the story since they are not describing the change in the shape of the distribution.
We’ve had 30+ hours of heavy snowfall, wind and cold in Summit County, Colo.
We just got slammed. It feels 20 degrees cooler out there. Good sleeping tonight. Thank you global warming.
Mostly a non-event here in Central Illinois. We had about 0.4 in. of rain and 30mph winds this morning.
I grew up in Sault Ste Marie, Michigan and remember the storm on November 10th, 1975 like it was yesterday. By all intents, this storm is bigger than that November gale that took the Edmond Fitzgerald. To those in the path of the storm , batten down the hatches and stay safe at home!
I hope the freighters on the big lakes are already safely in port or will soon be so.
Looks like the storm is causing temperatures to drop dramaticly. Is this due to the movement of a cold air mass out of Canada or the arctic that meets a warmer southern air mass and sets up a cyclonic flow generating the low pressure?
The moon is maximum North declination today, the Earth and Venus will be having a synod conjunction in three days, both of these conditions usually drive surges of warm moist air into the mid-latitudes. The negative ion content on the equatorial air mass coming in from the west coast for the past week, (the remains of the super typhoon Magi), is reacting with the warm moist gulf air sitting over the South Eastern USA.
This process is usually concentrated in the spring, due to atmospheric harmonics of the seasonal cresting of incoming Solar and Lunar atmospheric tides, but quite often happens in the fall and mid winter in the South Eastern USA. This is just natural lunar declinational tides in the atmosphere, doing what they normally do, it does not have anything to do with the CO2 content in the atmosphere.
http://research.aerology.com/severe-weather/lunar-declinational-affects-tornado-production/
Research into the processes that be at the link above, and forecast precipitation maps for today and yesterday, (and the next three years) are on the main pages;
http://www.aerology.com/national.aspx
show probable severe weather and tornado production by the appearance of the wispy, netted patterns of precipitation from past cycles of similar severe weather and tornado production.
Will Crump says:
October 26, 2010 at 11:37 am
Mr. Watts:
While no single storm can be traced to global warming, what is the energy source that drives the extreme low pressure of this particular storm?
Is it due to higher air temperatures or did the storm initially get its strength over water?
_____
This storm may owe much of its origins to the warmer than normal waters of the N. Pacific (which are ususally warmer than normal duirng both La Nina periods & cool phases of the PDO)
RyanMaue: the SSTs are actually very cold over most of the Pacific … SST anomalies
It may be cold on the ground – but look how much heat that storm is radiating to space as seen by the GOES EAST IR Channel 4
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/natl/loop-rb.html
Water has interesting effects 😉
Meanwhile O/T: Mount Merapi Erupts.
On the spot blogger here.